Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electrical and electronic circuits and systems. Moreover, the present invention relates to electrical and electronic circuits and systems for receiving signals, encoding signals and outputting signals.
Description of the Related Art
Everyday countless transactions are made with and by merchants, using credit cards, debit cards, cash or other means to complete the purchase. Customers making purchases are usually given itemized receipts, listing multiple items and details associated with a purchase.
Purchase transactions represent an opportunity to provide a connection from the purchaser, through the enabling merchant, to the individual original item and product vendors, manufacturers, producers, or providers whose items were part of a purchase transaction. This could enable a pathway to simpler or automatic product registration, access to product information including, but not limited to, operating manuals, ingredients and sources, replacement of consumables, customer feedback, and servicing.
However, in accordance with conventional teachings, for purchase transactions involving credit or debit cards, in the process of facilitating the transfer of funds from the buyer to the merchant or seller, often only the total amount of the purchase is included in the information sent to a buyer's credit or debit card company. Later, when the purchasing customer receives the statement from the credit or debit card company or bank, purchases are referenced only by the total purchase amount, with no itemization or details of the constituent items in the purchase. (Note: This “total purchase amount” is referred to in the art as “Level 1 Processing.” Level 2 and Level 3 Processing exists and is designated for B2B transactions and isn't currently used for regular customer purchases. Level 2 Processing typically includes a tax indicator denoting the presence of a sales tax, an itemized sales tax amount (must be greater than $0.00), and a unique customer code. Level 3 Processing includes all of the information associated with a Level 2 purchase plus transaction summary details like order date, invoice number, and address verification. It will also require line item details like item descriptions, product code, item quantity, and unit cost. For additional reference, see: https://paymentpop.com/level-1-level-2-and-level-3-interchange/)
The failure of these credit card systems to provide access to a digital form of itemized receipt to regular non-large-business purchasers places a significant burden of time and effort on such purchasers, requiring subsequent re-entry and categorization all of the individual constituent items, their individual prices and taxes included in the purchase into their banking registers, accounting ledgers or tracking software. Not only does this represent unnecessary and extra work for consumers, but constitutes a significant and unacceptable accessibility barrier for vision-impaired people.
This inability to easily access and integrate purchase data into customer accounting ledgers has been partly addressed by banks and credit card issuers that make basic non-itemized transaction information accessible to consumers and purchasing entities, but which contains only the merchant identification, transaction date, and total amount. Access in such systems can be viewed or downloaded in various formats, suitable for usage in conjunction with accounting software and other bookkeeping systems.
Alternative methods of capturing itemized receipt data include scanning individual paper receipts into software with capabilities of reading and identifying individual items in a purchase transaction, and digitizing them for suitable integration into accounting software.
Some accounting software allows subscription functionality, allowing users to specify and automatically and periodically download this non-itemized level of purchase transaction information directly into the user's accounting or bookkeeping file. But these users still need to reference the printed itemized receipt in order to break the purchase down into the constituent items and properly categorize and track the taxed portions of individual items in cases where detailed tracking and business accounting is desired.
In terms of user experience and ergonomic issues, alternative methods involving a digital image capture or scan of a printed paper receipt presents accuracy challenges, due to the variance in size and condition of printed paper receipts. These challenges may be further complicated if the paper receipt has been folded previously, or if any portion of the whole receipt become damaged or otherwise obscured, thus preventing or degrading the ability to scan or otherwise photographically capture it.
Such a scanning procedure could, in cases of longer receipts, require multiple images to be combined or stitched together as the digital image of the entirety of the itemized receipt prior to performing digital optical character recognition (OCR) conversion. These steps constitute additional digital processing and complexity that can contribute to problems in obtaining the itemized receipt data secondhand by photographic or scanned imaging means.
Secondly, there is the crucial issue of necessary and standardized formatting of itemized receipt data and other optional receipt information. Even of full paper receipt scanning methods succeed in accurately capturing alphanumeric data, there is the challenge of reconstructing a useful standardized format for that said captured data. Given the variances in formatting of different printed paper receipts from different merchants, this presents a challenge in presenting all of the itemized receipt data a customer user encounters in a standardized and usable format, such as being readily convertible to a single format usable by financial accounting software.
Some solutions requiring full paper receipt scanning offer customers the option of mailing in their paper receipts in batches to be processed in a dedicated facility, with the obtained digital data being delivered back to the customer. This may solve problems in customers doing their own full receipt scanning and improve overall accuracy of obtaining itemized receipt information, but in such methods, the customer cannot immediately obtain itemized receipt data, but must wait for the mailing, processing and results cycle.
Some solutions provided by merchants involve giving purchasing customers access to full digital copies of their itemized receipts online, with the access being in the form of a unique transaction ID-enabled URL, which in some embodiments is presented in a scan-able 2D bar code. In such a system, the purchasing customer uses a smart phone or other app-enabled electronic device with camera technology capable of scanning or otherwise imaging the two dimensional bar code, decoding to the encoded URL, and navigating a browser to the online digital copy of the itemized transaction purchase. Furthermore, some solutions allow customers to register so that they can archive and have ongoing access to an organized set of their itemized purchase receipts.
The obstacles in this scheme are two-fold. First, this system requires that the merchant have a backend network system encoding each and every itemized purchase transaction, generate unique transaction IDs and associated digital itemized receipt URLs, and sending these records to an online server which itself must be supported and maintained, and as such are too expensive or complex to utilize. Secondly, customers must have internet connectivity in order to access the unique URLs where their digital copies of itemized purchase receipts are located.
Some solutions solve the need to deliver an electronic copy of an itemized purchase receipt directly to a purchaser at the point of sale, but these utilize Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies, which utilize Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) in order to allow devices held in close proximity to transfer or exchange data. In such a solution, the purchasing customer holds a device, such as a smart phone with NFC capability, up to some portion of the merchant's POS equipment and the POS transfers the customer's itemized purchase receipt directly onto the customer's device. One significant obstacle for this solution is the need for merchants to upgrade all of their POS terminals to have NFC capability, which carries significant, and in some cases prohibitive, costs. For additional reference on NFC technology see: http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-nfc-works-and-mobile-payments/)
Hence, a need remains in the art for a system or method for accurately capturing, formatting and outputting itemized receipt data in a manner that is easily and immediately accessible to the consumer, as well as being cost-effective and comparatively simple for merchants to incorporate into their existing POS terminal software, without needing to upgrade much more expensive hardware.